I never understood this whole flame war over calculators, it always seemed idiotic. Just pick a damn calculator and learn it. Both are fine pieces of hardware.
The driving force for the creation of the transistor was the telecom industry since they wanted to replace vacuum tubes in their amplifiers since they were so unreliable.
Now while it's true that the aerospace industry was a large market for it when it was finally created, it was not the main factor for its creation.
"Many computer enthusiasts design their own base units, but a complete re-build from a different material is a rarity, underlining typical Mac eccentricity."
Uh, this has been done on the PC mod scene years ago. How is this an example of mac eccentricity?
Was it even mass released in theatres? I never once heard of it being released outside of a small group of theatres, and believe me, I was looking at the time.
The reason I've always heard is that it was slated to be released in October of 2001, but September 11th happened and a scene in the movie kind of alluded to it, so the company decided to release it straight to DVD.
Unfortunate.
Bringing this up makes me want to write a slashdot review of it.
Also another unfinished trilogy, the wonderful Freespace series.
Volition made two of the greatest space sim fighter games with good storylines. They put in a nice cliffhanger at the end of Freespace 2, then that was it.
They said not enough copies were sold of Freespace 2 (Which I would blame on bad marketing) for Interplay to warrant a third. So everyone who was a fan of the game was left with an unfinished story.
For those who are looking for worthy projects to donate to, here's a good list of what is happening in the field of distributed projects, sorted by subject.
Even though I've built hundreds of machines with other drives and hardly ever got those back, it's quite obvious I am bad at my job because a batch of these drives consistently came back bad.
I can't believe I did not see the correlation before.
I swear there were things of better quality built in the Soviet Union.
One time where I used to work, our supplier accidentally shipped us a whole box of them (About 20 drives). We decided to keep them and sell them for profit. About two months later (After we had built and sold about 10 machines with those drives), they quickly started to come back to the shop. So with the 10 we had left, we replaced them all.
The problem got bad when those 10 started to come back, and since we couldn't RMA the drives (Our supplier would've found out about us ripping them off), we had to buy new drives to replace those. So in the end, we ended up paying more for Samsung drives we got for free than for Maxtor and Seagate drives we paid for.
With the huge number of IBM drives that have failed (The 45GXP line specifically) in a short amount of time, I'm amazed they were able to afford to not change over.
"...Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world. [NOTE: all companies are US-based unless otherwise noted"
Hmmm.... I wondering why my last phone bill was $36.45 + $7i dollars.
I wonder if you would be saying this if you had AIDS or cancer.
Also, most, if not all, of the work done in these projects go to universities, so there's no real money to be made.
And finally, there are some distributed projects like Ubero (http://ubero.com) that will pay you for your time if the solutions found by distributed computing lead to someone making a lot of money.
My dad has told me many stories about his youth in rural Hungary. One story stood out in particular. He told about one day when just playing around outside, on a clear day, small frogs (Probably no bigger than a quarter) just rained from the sky. He said he never saw anything like it.
I know a lot of the skeptical people here will just say that he was making it up, and I wouldn't blame them. My dad, however, is not the type to make up stories.
Now whether it was a natural occurance or if there was a human element involved, that's anybody's guess. However, one explanation I've been given is that a tornado had hit somewhere not far away, and it just "deposited" everything when it fizzled out. Any meteorologists care to prove/disprove that theory? I figure if that were the case, there would be at least some clouds or some kind of storm around.
Knowing some people who worked at convienence stores, I would rather get my food from a machine than go to a store with some teenage punk working there who pissed all over some food or something because he got bored at 2AM.
The things those people do to the food (Just because they're bored mind you) is beyond most people's imagination. I'll take the machine thank you.
Not to mention in the end this lowers prices. So there's another good reason.
I think I'd rather just get a safe deposit box and make instructions to have it opened after my death. Inside would be instructions for emails, postings, etc...
Then you know you wouldn't have to worry about accidentally tripping the program if you went on vacation.
You'd still need an encryption program for files though if you don't trust anyone with that, but that's not a big deal.
Accidentally encrypting data is no big deal, accidentally sending off final emails with very personal messages is a whole other story.
Slashdot Mirror
The 3 is supposed to be a 5.
And yes, I punched that into a TI-89.
I never understood this whole flame war over calculators, it always seemed idiotic. Just pick a damn calculator and learn it. Both are fine pieces of hardware.
Actually, he's right
The driving force for the creation of the transistor was the telecom industry since they wanted to replace vacuum tubes in their amplifiers since they were so unreliable.
Now while it's true that the aerospace industry was a large market for it when it was finally created, it was not the main factor for its creation.
Would be kinda cool if this was implemented. It wouldn't very long before the whole thing was hacked and published on the web.
And I imagine there would be a lot of people who wouldn't mind using it against the *AA and Hatch.
For those interested, here's a link to the product page, with a handy dandy video of it in action.
"Many computer enthusiasts design their own base units, but a complete re-build from a different material is a rarity, underlining typical Mac eccentricity."
Uh, this has been done on the PC mod scene years ago. How is this an example of mac eccentricity?
COBOL is COOL without the B
Was it even mass released in theatres? I never once heard of it being released outside of a small group of theatres, and believe me, I was looking at the time.
The reason I've always heard is that it was slated to be released in October of 2001, but September 11th happened and a scene in the movie kind of alluded to it, so the company decided to release it straight to DVD.
Unfortunate.
Bringing this up makes me want to write a slashdot review of it.
I'm sure the million dollar figure is in yen, which is the equivalent to a few tens of thousands of american dollars.
For those of you interested in a review of a X3 camera and a simple explanation of the technology behind it, this review is pretty decent.
Remember this thing? They were supposed to release this over 2 to 3 years ago.
Also another unfinished trilogy, the wonderful Freespace series.
Volition made two of the greatest space sim fighter games with good storylines. They put in a nice cliffhanger at the end of Freespace 2, then that was it.
They said not enough copies were sold of Freespace 2 (Which I would blame on bad marketing) for Interplay to warrant a third. So everyone who was a fan of the game was left with an unfinished story.
I wonder if the computer got the rocket ship to launch. I only managed to do it once when I was young.
For those who are looking for worthy projects to donate to, here's a good list of what is happening in the field of distributed projects, sorted by subject.
Yes, I suck at my job.
Even though I've built hundreds of machines with other drives and hardly ever got those back, it's quite obvious I am bad at my job because a batch of these drives consistently came back bad.
I can't believe I did not see the correlation before.
You've obviously never owned one.
I swear there were things of better quality built in the Soviet Union.
One time where I used to work, our supplier accidentally shipped us a whole box of them (About 20 drives). We decided to keep them and sell them for profit. About two months later (After we had built and sold about 10 machines with those drives), they quickly started to come back to the shop. So with the 10 we had left, we replaced them all.
The problem got bad when those 10 started to come back, and since we couldn't RMA the drives (Our supplier would've found out about us ripping them off), we had to buy new drives to replace those. So in the end, we ended up paying more for Samsung drives we got for free than for Maxtor and Seagate drives we paid for.
With the huge number of IBM drives that have failed (The 45GXP line specifically) in a short amount of time, I'm amazed they were able to afford to not change over.
He can watch his machines get slashdotted from the inside now.
"...Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world. [NOTE: all companies are US-based unless otherwise noted"
Hmmm.... I wondering why my last phone bill was $36.45 + $7i dollars.
I wonder if you would be saying this if you had AIDS or cancer.
Also, most, if not all, of the work done in these projects go to universities, so there's no real money to be made.
And finally, there are some distributed projects like Ubero (http://ubero.com) that will pay you for your time if the solutions found by distributed computing lead to someone making a lot of money.
Tell that to my dad.
My dad has told me many stories about his youth in rural Hungary. One story stood out in particular. He told about one day when just playing around outside, on a clear day, small frogs (Probably no bigger than a quarter) just rained from the sky. He said he never saw anything like it.
I know a lot of the skeptical people here will just say that he was making it up, and I wouldn't blame them. My dad, however, is not the type to make up stories.
Now whether it was a natural occurance or if there was a human element involved, that's anybody's guess. However, one explanation I've been given is that a tornado had hit somewhere not far away, and it just "deposited" everything when it fizzled out. Any meteorologists care to prove/disprove that theory? I figure if that were the case, there would be at least some clouds or some kind of storm around.
Knowing some people who worked at convienence stores, I would rather get my food from a machine than go to a store with some teenage punk working there who pissed all over some food or something because he got bored at 2AM.
The things those people do to the food (Just because they're bored mind you) is beyond most people's imagination. I'll take the machine thank you.
Not to mention in the end this lowers prices. So there's another good reason.
Go to largish network parties Case modders have been doing this for years.
I think I'd rather just get a safe deposit box and make instructions to have it opened after my death. Inside would be instructions for emails, postings, etc...
Then you know you wouldn't have to worry about accidentally tripping the program if you went on vacation.
You'd still need an encryption program for files though if you don't trust anyone with that, but that's not a big deal.
Accidentally encrypting data is no big deal, accidentally sending off final emails with very personal messages is a whole other story.
What VCD group is encoding and releasing this? What's the quality? It's not on vcdquality.com for some reason.
Since when is a word processor a game, and how can you make it multiplayer?
"There are a small number of networked PCs playing a small number of games. (Red Ace Squadron and Worms Word Party when I was there)"